


Fermata

by Crimsun



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:05:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimsun/pseuds/Crimsun
Summary: “You know that I could kill you in a second if I wanted to, right?” Donghyuck asks, the back of his head throbbing, but mind still fixed on the feeling of the Astra in his back pocket.Yukhei smiles at him and there’s something behind his gaze, like he knows some secret that Donghyuck isn’t in on and it’s almost wistful. Donghyuck is no stranger to this particular look from the other but it throws him off guard every time.“Yeah, but you would rather die than kill me, Donghyuck,” Yukhei says, like it’s a fact and Donghyuck frowns, the air suddenly feeling thick as it enters his lungs.





	Fermata

**Author's Note:**

> Hello world, 
> 
> Assassins? Hyuckhei? Surprise trope? I gotchu! (finger guns)
> 
> Dedicated to the most precious Donghyuck stan, Nia. Happy birthday, bub! You deserve the world and more!
> 
> English isn't my first language, so proceed at your own risk.
> 
> Happy reading, y'all!

“Holy fuck dude, you’re everywhere!”

Donghyuck grits, sighing in defeat, his peripheral vision focusing on the large hand pressing the barrel of a gun against the side of his head, the familiar man’s lips hot against the shell of his ear. He could easily, well maybe not _that_ easily but still, he could get out of the grip if he wanted but that means coming face to face with the most annoying man he has ever had the displeasure of knowing, with probably the cockiest smirk on his face, and he’d rather let the other do his thing and see him jump off a cliff or something.

Yukhei chuckles in response, and it’s loud, deep in that way Donghyuck would love if it was anyone else and not said tall conundrum but lying can only get him till here.

“I promised to follow you to the ends of the Earth, didn’t I?”

Yukhei sounds dead serious and Donghyuck can already feel a sneeze building in the back of his throat from the conditioned allergy he has developed to the other. No, Donghyuck refuses to believe that it is due to the dust lining every single surface in his and Jeno’s apartment which hasn’t seen the light of day for a couple of months.

“I wish you wouldn’t stay so true to your words,” Donghyuck sighs out, Yukhei’s arm around his neck loosening a little when he struggles, enough for him to doubt what the other’s intentions are just like he always does.

It’s one of those “mock drill” days where Yukhei plays around and finds new ways to annoy the hell out of Donghyuck. Donghyuck hates mock drills.

“Can’t help that I am a man of my words, Donghyuck,” Yukhei breathes against his ear and it sends chills down his spine but he refuses to surrender his body to a full body shiver, refuses the other man the satisfaction of seeing him having a reaction to him.

“Let me go. I have stuff to do,” Donghyuck spits, annoyed.

Yukhei lowers the gun from the side of his forehead but doesn’t make any other move to set him free. Donghyuck uses all his strength to elbow the other man in his side, and curls his right hand into a fist as Yukhei winces and lets him go but just as Donghyuck is about to punch the other in the face, Yukhei smirks. The next moment finds Donghyuck being backed up against the wall, Yukhei’s arms almost bruisingly tight around both his wrists, pinned with no way out.

Yukhei smirks down at him and Donghyuck will never admit this out loud but he finds it incredibly hot even with the way he can feel his wrists protesting against the tight grip.

Yukhei smiles at him knowingly.

“You’ve gotten braver,” he comments with no heat, smirk turning to an amused smile.

Donghyuck looks up at him defiantly.

“Have to be braver to survive among dickheads like you,” Donghyuck fires back.

Yukhei clicks his tongue and tightens his hands around Donghyuck and the younger knows that it’s a warning, a clear one that he is pushing the limits.

The grip loosens when Donghyuck winces, Yukhei’s gaze softening before he schools it into a look of nonchalance.

“You’re getting cocky,” he states, giving Donghyuck a pointed look, “It’s gonna get you killed.”

Donghyuck gives him the most scathing glare he can muster up.

“Why do you care?”

Yukhei lets his grip loosen completely, Donghyuck’s arms falling to his sides. He rubs his wrists, mentally cursing the taller man, already knowing that he’d be lucky if the bruise disappeared in a week. At this rate, he was going to develop some kind of permanent wrist injury and then he’ll have to open a tea shop or something and stare at his favourite rifles framed on the wall like war veterans do.

Clearly, Donghyuck is not a fan of the mentioned outcome.

“I have my reasons,” Yukhei states, staring resolutely at Donghyuck.

Donghyuck groans in frustration.

“You know that I could kill you in a second if I wanted to, right?” Donghyuck asks, the back of his head throbbing, but mind still fixed on the feeling of the Astra in his back pocket.

Yukhei smiles at him and there’s something behind his gaze, like he knows some secret that Donghyuck isn’t in on and it’s almost wistful. Donghyuck is no stranger to this particular look from the other but it throws him off guard every time.

“Yeah, but you would rather die than kill me, Donghyuck,” Yukhei says, like it’s a fact and Donghyuck frowns, the air suddenly feeling thick as it enters his lungs.

Donghyuck tilts his head slightly to the side, trying to figure out how to phrase the question in his head but Yukhei speaks up interrupting his line of thought, pulling his phone out and glancing at it as he does so.

“Jeno’s here. Also, since you’re doing some renovation, paint one wall in your room yellow and I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to grip you that tightly,” Yukhei says, shoving the phone down his pocket in a hurry.

“What the fuck? Dude, you’ve literally been following me for months like a creepy stalker and being passive-aggressive and denying information and now you’re just strutting into my home and demanding that I paint my room fucking yellow?”

Yukhei stills on his way to the door but only for a second and then he’s leaving like he was never there. The door shuts quietly, leaving Donghyuck alone with a multitude of questions.

“Also, how the fuck do you know that Jeno is here? You haven’t even met him, weirdo,” Donghyuck mumbles to the silent apartment, his audience white-shrouded furniture and dust bunnies.

Donghyuck rubs his wrist again and sighs when the door opens loudly, Jeno entering with both his hands occupied with shopping bags. He kicks the door closed and pauses in the hallway, eyeing Donghyuck, proceeding to rush to the kitchen to place the bags on the counter.

Donghyuck plops down on the couch and looks up at the ceiling for a good few minutes before he feels the cushion sink, Jeno leaning back and mimicking his posture.

“What’s wrong?” Jeno sits up straight after a few seconds and looks at him.

“He was here. Again,” Donghyuck replies, eyes still closed.

“Oh,” Jeno says, intelligently, being ever so helpful.

“Can you at least pretend that you’re helping me?” Donghyuck huffs, opening his eyes and straightening up.

Jeno ignores the snark and sighs. “Was he here when you came or like, jumped through the window or something like he did in Bulgaria?”

“He was already here,” Donghyuck confirms. “Jeno, do you think we should report this to HQ or something? Not like a random enquiry to Johnny or Ten hyung but like... as an actual complaint? He clearly needs something from me.”

Donghyuck has no energy left from the encounter with his secret admirer slash stalker slash possible friend slash enemy. Jeno’s eyebrows knit together and he inhales deeply.

“He hasn’t hurt you though. He had a lot of opportunities to but he never did,” Jeno pipes up, eyes roaming over the living room. It’s a nervous tick. Donghyuck figures that he’s probably just worried for him.

Donghyuck self-consciously rubs at the bruised skin of his wrists, pulling the sleeves over them and hums in contemplation.

“What if I knew him before? Before the mission went haywire? What if we met in fucking Vienna or something and he’s just salty that I don’t remember him anymore?”

Contrary to popular belief, Donghyuck isn’t kidding. He’s also not a brainless moron. He is almost hundred percent certain that Yukhei knows him from before everything turned into a mess after the Terrifying Debacle of the Millennium but all of his colleagues at the agency and at the HQ denies ever knowing Yukhei. Donghyuck despite being dismissed from fieldwork permanently for some months had begged Jeno to accompany him to the HQ to do a search on the man.

But according to the government records, and to no one’s surprise, Wong Yukhei did not exist. Sure there were lots of people with the same name but not this particular one.

The Wong Yukhei whom Donghyuck sees from time to time was a ghost.

There were no parking tickets in his name, no blurry shots from shitty security cameras, no house, no cars, nothing to put a background to the face, nothing to scope out his identity.

Jeno shifts in his seat and lets out an exhausted sigh, “Donghyuck, we’ve had this conversation a million times before. We’re just running in circles now. It’s obvious that he knows you. The only thing you can do now is to actively go search for him and corner him first,” Donghyuck gives Jeno a thoughtful look and the fellow agent groans, “Keep in mind that he’s a ghost. He’s... he’s someone who’s been erased.”

The last line doesn’t particularly sit well with Donghyuck.

“Well, that’s harsh, Jeno. He’s only a ghost on paper.” Donghyuck shoots back only to come face to face with a weird look on the other’s face.

“What?” Donghyuck asks, irritated.

Jeno shakes his head and rubs a hand over his face.

“Nana is coming over later. I’m gonna clean,” he declares, indirectly telling him that he isn’t interested in continuing this conversation, rising to his feet and stretching.

Donghyuck thinks about Yukhei’s suggestion from before and wonders why his mind lingers on it.

“Actually, can we go get some paint?”

 

***

 

Donghyuck doesn’t remember much from the past year. Scratch that, he doesn’t remember anything from the past year. Maybe not a perfect 365 days of zilch memory-wise but still somewhere between making coffee on some random day two years ago and waking up to see Jaemin curled up in a small ball on the chair beside his bed in January the next year, Donghyuck’s memory fails him.

 

_(“The mission failed.” Donghyuck remembers Jeno saying, a distraught Jaemin crying his eyes out, digging his fingers into Jeno’s left bicep next to him, the funny smell of disinfectants invading his nostrils._

_“We nearly lost you.”_

_“You were in a coma for nearly a month.”_

_“You might not remember everything.”)_

 

And just like that, Donghyuck is a secret agent with a faulty memory and is deemed unfit for fieldwork. But he doesn’t stay permanently dismissed.

“You can do tech recon but you are under strict orders to not involve yourself in volatile situations,” Yuta, the new mission head, informs him regretfully, completely against Donghyuck ever returning to the job again, despite not being familiar with Donghyuck.

Being confined to doing the less adventurous reconnaissance missions don’t contribute much to his already bruised ego. Jeno reminds him time and time again that someone who has memory loss is not fit to work for the agency, that he should be grateful that for some reason, the higher-ups still want him in the organisation even if it is in the role of someone who sets up laptops in the back of vans and watches security camera footage for hours.

Jeno doesn’t attempt to sugar coat things for him, neither does Jaemin and despite facts being given to him straight, he craves the adrenaline rush, the feeling of the cold metal of his favourite girl Astra warming up in his hands and the hasty escapades through rooftops and just about everything that comes with the territory.

Donghyuck knows that he sounds like he doesn’t care about the lost chapters of his life, a significant sum of hours that was wiped out from blunt trauma, knows that his colleagues wonder if he is crazy when he visits the base once in a while to hand in a hard drive or just to see Renjun and Mark who are permanently stuck in the mission report room. He knows that he talks like it doesn’t matter, like he gives zero fucks about a blow to his head stealing some crucial chunks of his memory but he actually does care.

His tears are his alone, his pain too and so, when he is lying awake at night trying hard to remember when Jeno got shot on his calf or when Jaemin bought the screen cleaner kit for him, his facade topples to the ground and he lets himself curl into a ball because goddamn it, he doesn’t _remember_.

What is so easy for others has become something that Donghyuck dreads and when Johnny prods him in every which way possible trying to get him to break, he doesn’t because he has already lost some important memories and the last thing he needs is for the elder agent to forward an anonymous report on how he is dealing with it all in the unhealthiest ways possible.

In the midst of it all, Wong Yukhei is like the enigmatic rain, sometimes welcome, but mostly unwelcome with his cocky smirks, long-ass legs, intense looks, his god-awful pterodactyl cackles on the good days and resounding low chuckles on the bad ones.

Donghyuck doesn’t know Yukhei like the other often hints that he knows Donghyuck. But even then, even if he complains to Jaemin and Jeno about the other’s seemingly random visits at the apartment, the convenience store, the alley or his own fucking car, a part of Donghyuck looks forward to this drop-ins.

Donghyuck meets Yukhei for the first time in the hospital a few days after he wakes up and that is why he still strongly believes that the other man is a piece of the puzzle he lost. He stays in the ICU for a week even after he wakes up from the tranquil sleep and two days after he is moved to the ward, he blinks his eyes open at an early hour of dawn, the sun just on the horizon but rising slowly, to see a tall mess of a man stare at him with wide eyes, giving Edward Cullen and every creeper ever in canon a run for their money.

“Hello, world,” Donghyuck remembers saying, his heart monitor beeping faster as his spidey senses tingled with doubt the more he looked at the man.

“Hey, Donghyuck,” Yukhei had replied, the low tone of his voice giving Donghyuck goosebumps.

A mind-bogglingly confusing but short conversation later, Yukhei had gotten up and walked to him, his unfairly huge hand smoothing his hair back from his forehead and even if Donghyuck had wanted to flinch away from the stranger’s touch, he hadn’t.

“Keep an eye out. I’ll drop in. Just know that I’ll follow you to the ends of the Earth,” he had said, face undeniably expressionless but eyes full of something Donghyuck still has trouble deciphering.

Those words were a promise and Yukhei, in spite of his sometimes cold, but mostly loud personality still stays true to his words.

Most days, like the visit today, Donghyuck wants to smack him on the head and sock him in the face and write a possible hostile situation report to the HQ but he never does because on the other days, Yukhei gives him reasons, reasons which makes him believe in himself over again; because on the other days, Yukhei leans on a window sill or a parking lot or an abandoned street and just watches Donghyuck like he is significant, like his existence is important, barely says anything to get under his nerves and never asks him if he remembers him.

Yukhei never tells him where he works or who he works for or how he knows Donghyuck, just tells him once in a while about how he’ll follow Donghyuck to the ends of the Earth with a kind of unquestionable sombreness and provides him with vague and useless pieces of information or warnings and leaves in a few moments time, sometimes like a torrential storm, sometimes like a quiet drizzle, but always like some form of the rain.

Dawn calls out to him and it marks another sleepless night which translates to a night which has passed void of nightmares.  Donghyuck inhales and exhales heavily, hand absentmindedly scratching that one scar on his right bicep from when a ring dagger-wielding agent had nicked him in a fight in his first year of joining the agency.

There are more scars on his body, and when he’s showering for some peace of mind, he often finds his gaze fixing on the deep scar in his left thigh or the imprint left behind by a bullet on his left bicep or the small cut on the side of his neck, all from the year he doesn’t remember.

It makes him feel like he doesn’t really know himself, leaving him to wonder about all the possible character development he might have gone through, all the people he might have come across during those times, none of which he is privy to anymore and that side of his chest aches with the phantom pain from something his mind doesn’t remember but heart does.

Donghyuck sits up, hand automatically going to his Astra under his pillow to see if it is still there, anxiety calming a little when his skin meets the cold metal. The floor is unforgivingly cold when he lowers his feet down, the chill settling in from the rain and drifting into the apartment.

Both Jeno and Jaemin had been assigned an undercover mission in Bulgaria for the past two months and Donghyuck along with Chenle were given orders to tag along, both for doing surveillance and observation which also meant that they were the backup team in case something went wrong. Donghyuck, as much as he loved the thrill of finally doing some fieldwork even if it wasn’t much, had missed their shared apartment greatly and on the final day of their mission, he had been ecstatic to get into the helicopter, of finally getting to go home.

Donghyuck shakes his head at the fragmental state of his thoughts and shuffles towards the kitchen to see Jeno glaring at a cup of what Donghyuck instinctually knows is hot chocolate.

“You’re still up,” He says, peeking inside the cup and confirming that it is indeed hot chocolate before he takes a sip from it.

From the way Jeno doesn’t attempt to tackle him to the ground for touching his precious fruit of labour at the ass crack of dawn, Donghyuck knows it’s something principal.

“What are you thinking, Socrates?”

He settles on the chair opposite his best friend and peers at him with a questioning look. Jeno looks at him and twirls the mug on the table, the violet porcelain spinning like a ballerina doing a pirouette but in slow motion.

“I think... I think I wanna quit, Hyuck,” Jeno says and it looks like it kills him to say it but he means it with every atom of his existence and this, Donghyuck knows with the certainty of his knowledge about the ridges across the body of his Astra.

Conversations during this time in limbo when the world is too dark but not dark enough has always been their hours of truth, when good-natured jabs are second to honesty, when life-changing facts are opening statements.

“It’s for Jaemin, isn’t it?” It isn’t really a question, so Donghyuck continues, “You’re scared,” he states and he makes sure that his voice is warm, hopes that he sounds like comfort because in these strange hours of dawn, they’re not secret agents or infiltrators or programmed killers, they’re best friends who’ve grown up together.

Jeno nods and he lets out a heavy breath through his nose, pulling at his hair a little when he runs his fingers through it.

“He... two weeks ago, at the banquet, when he and I were fighting Jordan’s men, we thought we were done with everyone but I can still remember the guy who came up behind him with that crowbar and if... if I hadn’t seen... if I was distracted then he would have been in the hospital or worse, dead,” Jeno breathes, voice cracking at multiple points but still carrying on with this desperate need to let it out.

“But he’s not, he’s sleeping in your bed and he’s still breathing,” Donghyuck points out, a quiet reality check, but Jeno shakes his head at him.

“For a month, you were too, you were breathing too but you weren’t really there. Even now,” Jeno trails off.

“Even now what, Jeno?”

Jeno looks at him with an apologetic look.

“Even now you’re not okay. Hell, you forgot a year, Hyuck. You think I don’t see it but I do. You’ve always been shitty at hiding stuff from me and this whole deal with you was enough for me. It’s only because of some shit luck that you woke up, that you didn’t forget me,” Jeno tears up, but doesn’t cry, not yet, still holding on tight to his composure, so Donghyuck only looks at him as he rambles on, “I’ve been having doubts about this job for months now. I won’t... I can’t handle it if he forgets me. I can’t possibly imagine looking at his face only for him to ask who I am. I can’t live without him and if that means leaving this life behind, I’ll do it in the blink of an eye because god, I love him so much, Donghyuck. I can’t let him die.”

And just like that, Donghyuck’s prediction from when they were sixteen and still growing into their own limbs comes true.

 

( _“Dude, you love him, like you’re actually fucking in love with him. It’s like you’ll die or some shit before you let him die. Someday, you’re gonna leave something you really love for him and then I’ll be there to say “I told you so” because I’m a bitch like that. But really, Jeno, you love Nana, the forever kind.”)_

 

 “It looks like you’ve got it all figured out,” Donghyuck says, a small smile playing on his lips, ignoring that part of the rant featuring his memory.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Jeno asks, not actually expecting an answer. “I have to talk to him though. It’s gonna take time for him to come around but I’m hoping he will or we’ll keep doing this and I’ll just have to shoot myself in the head if something happens to him,” Jeno declares.

It isn’t a joke. It’s a little selfish, the teensiest bit, to love like that, to love someone so much that you’d die for them but Donghyuck is in no place to judge because he’s fairly certain that he’d do the same if he ever fell in love. He says selfish because when you love someone like that, you’re burdening them with your life too but nonetheless it’s love and theirs is just the dangerous kind.

Donghyuck gets up from the chair and ruffles Jeno’s hair, walking to the coffee maker to brew some.

Several minutes later, he’s halfway through the dark liquid when Jeno speaks up again.

“Have you ever considered the fact that you might’ve forgotten some crucial memories? Things that even I can’t tell you no matter how much we kept in touch?”

Donghyuck gulps the coffee down, throat burning and protesting against the scalding hot liquid.

“I do but I try not to think about it too much because that shit is hard, bro,” Donghyuck tries to joke. Jeno is not impressed.

“You met a lot of people, saw a lot of places, most of which I know but even then, I can’t tell you your exact thoughts, your exact feelings when you saw them. Those memories, they’re gone and they’re probably never coming back and I always... always feel so lost when I think about what I should tell you because I don’t know if it’ll help you or not, I don’t know if I should meddle or not and sometimes...” Jeno pauses, as if he’d spoken way more than intended and Donghyuck feels a strange feeling come over him, his gut twisting.

“Sometimes?”

“Sometimes, I lie to you and it’s the worst thing to do to you but it would ruin you if you knew.”

Jeno sounds really certain about it and Donghyuck just waves it away.

“It’s okay. I want to know too but you won’t tell me so let’s save us both the trouble,” He declares and he feels brave and proud because for a long time he has considered himself a coward for not confronting Jeno, for not calling him out on his lies and right now, he has acknowledged that he knows and it’s not going to change anything but it’s out there and he feels a hundred times lighter.

Donghyuck doesn’t want to dwell on the topic for long and he says so, Jeno nods, asks him to take his time and extends the rest of the lukewarm hot chocolate like a peace offering and smiles at him.

“You have something else to tell me,” Donghyuck voices out loud when Jeno shifts in his seat.

“I was... I wanted to ask if you’re okay with Nana moving in. He is paying rent for an apartment he doesn’t use and I thought...”

Donghyuck levels a glare at him.

“You are such a moron, Jeno, I swear to God. Mark hyung and I have had a bet going on for five years, you dickwad. We bet on 2 and 3 years and we both lost because just like your unhealthy obsession with cats, you’re a big pussy.”

Jeno sends him a panicked look. “You bet on us?”

“Yeah, but you already know my answer. Ask him. I don’t mind. At all. Half his stuff is here anyway,” Donghyuck points out and eyes the vase placed in the middle of the kitchen table and the mug he is drinking from as samples.

Jeno’s shoulder sags and Donghyuck smiles, feeling incredibly fond of his best friend who is an ace of all trades except for things related to Jaemin.

When he goes back to bed to attempt to fall asleep for a few hours, his heart is full. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t remember slipping into the hands of oblivion.

 

***

 

Donghyuck’s phone rings insistently and he groans, pulling the covers over his head in an attempt to prove to the universe that he didn’t hear the demonic chants emitting from his phone. A minute later, his pager goes off and Donghyuck blinks his eyes open.

He immediately gets up, groping the mattress for his phone only to see 3 missed calls from Jeno and a text.

**_Get to the base. Quick._ **

Donghyuck does just that but if he evades immediate and horrendous death at least four times and breaks a couple of hundred traffic rules on the way, no one has to know.

Who is he kidding? Renjun and Mark were probably cursing him to hell, scrambling to delete the footage of his traffic debacles.

When he pulls into the driveway, Doyoung is leaning in front of the wall at the entrance, eyebrows pinched, looking like a close relative of the devil. The guards who usually stand there have relocated to the sides, trying their best to stay away from the man, knowing better than to mess with the elder agent.

Doyoung twists his head as he sees Donghyuck sprint up the stairs. He turns and pushes open the giant metal door after haphazardly pressing his finger against it, a clear sign that they are indeed in a hurry. Donghyuck does the same and follows him inside.

“Hyung, what’s up?” Donghyuck asks. He would have been struggling to keep up with the other man’s fast and long strides if not for all the training he went through.

“You have a mission,” Doyoung deadpans, pressing his access card and finger against another door which leads to Jaehyun’s cabin. Donghyuck hurriedly waves at Chenle who walks to him from another direction, the younger shooting him a wide smile and an excited wave.

When they enter Jaehyun’s office, Donghyuck feels quite a bit of confusion at the people gathered there. Strangely enough, Taeyong, the head of Level Blue missions is there for some reason. Donghyuck has never gone on Level Blue missions since he hadn’t yet gotten clearance for them, mostly because senior agents were usually the ones who undertook them. He quietly wonders why the other man is here, tilting his head slightly like the creature of habit he is.

Jeno nods at him from where he is sat next to Taeyong and Donghyuck throws him a look of confusion. Jaehyun is sitting in his chair, hair sticking up weirdly; probably due to the number of times he pulled at it and gestures at Donghyuck to sit down, Doyoung turning a corner to sit on the chair opposite Taeyong.

Donghyuck squints at the tuft of hair peeking up in the chair opposite Jaehyun and he steps forward, seating himself on the chair next to the stranger and turns only to see that it’s not a stranger.

It’s Yukhei.

The taller man doesn’t look at him even when Donghyuck continues to glare a hole through his skull.

“So now that you’re here, Agent, we can proceed,” Jaehyun says, his voice deep and sleep-addled and Donghyuck knows that he was probably a victim of being awoken in the midst of his sleep just like Donghyuck.

“Donghyuck,” Taeyong calls and Donghyuck looks at him strangely because he has only seen the man around once or twice, and as far as he can remember, not enough interaction has happened for him to say his name like that.

“You’re going on a Level Blue.”

Donghyuck’s eyes go wide and he stares at the man like he’s grown another head.

“All due respect, Agent Lee,” Taeyong frowns at him for some reason at that but he carries on, “As much as it pains me to say this, I’m not fit to go for even a Level Red. I don’t remember anything from the past year and it would be a stupid move to send me to a Level Blue considering the priority of the mission.”

Jaehyun and Doyoung give him a sad look as he finishes.

“Donghyuck, you went on 17 Level Blue missions in the past year,” Doyoung pipes up, voice level.

Donghyuck’s first reaction is shock as it obviously warrants. But he looks at Taeyong’s desolate expression and an apology skips to the tip of his tongue.

“I’m sorry, Agent Lee, but I don’t remember you or those missions,” He says and the way Taeyong shakes his head in response makes him a little sad.

“We are aware of how much of a risk it is but Black has demanded that you tag along with their agent for the next mission. They don’t need anyone else from NCT for this. I suggested Jeno but they rejected the offer and asked for you specifically. We are hoping that you will agree regardless because the mission requires immediate looking over and quick dispatch,” Jaehyun explains, never once taking his gaze off of Donghyuck’s and there’s something in his gaze that Donghyuck recognizes as pleading.

Donghyuck had never been close to Jaehyun in the time he can remember but right now, sitting here in the other man’s cabin, with his eyes focused on him, he knows that they’ve had development in the year he doesn’t remember, that Jaehyun wants him to remember but doesn’t want to push him.

Donghyuck pushes those thoughts to the side and forces himself to focus back to the mission at hand. Black is the head agency that takes care of Level Blue missions, top-secret assassinations, infiltration in armies, and nuclear-activity related matters. So, when Black demands an agent, no matter what intelligence agency it is, they have to provide assistance. Their agents are the best in the job and they never leave traces and to be asked for by a group of experts, perhaps the most-skilled men in the job, Donghyuck knows that he has to agree.

“I’m in,” he concedes because he always does, “but who am I gonna be working with?”

Jaehyun’s gaze shifts to Yukhei.

“It’s nice to meet you, Donghyuck. I’m Yukhei and I work for Black.”

Donghyuck looks at the rest of the group, their expressions clearly telling him that they know the taller man and he’s angry. Of course, he figured that something serious was up but he was trying to hold onto the hope that Yukhei was just some agent who joined the agency in the last year.

Now, it feels like betrayal served cold, just how he hates it.

“Is this some kind of joke?” He doesn’t wait for a response as he continues, “Was it fun for you to know who he was and not answer me when I ran here a hundred million times asking who he was, rifling through tons and tons of records looking for just anything on him? It must’ve been nice to play someone who doesn’t remember shit from the past year.”

“Donghyuck, language,” Doyoung grits. Donghyuck ignores it and huffs, glaring at the men around the table, angry that they had lied about something so principal.

“No offence, Donghyuck, but I work for Black and if they told you that they knew me and revealed whom I work for, they would have been six feet under now. Protocol 61, any agent who reveals the identity of an agent of Black is immediately considered a threat and is liable to elimination in three days of confirmation of reveal,” Yukhei says and he sounds cold, hardened like people in their field are, so much unlike the man who wanted Donghyuck to do alpha-beta pruning to figure out the Candy Crush minimax algorithm. He’s tapping an uneven beat on the glass desk and he looks like a killer for the first time.

Donghyuck huffs and smoothes his hair back with one hand. It’s like Yukhei’s words flip the switch in him making him slide right across to his agent persona but the feeling of betrayal stays.

“What’s the mission?” He asks, holding off the urge to grit his teeth and it’s a truce, not a very peaceful one but still, he hopes that the others understand that he gets why they had to do what they did.

“There is news of plans for a nuclear bomb creation by Kim Industries. You are to do recon and confirm first before complete elimination. Retrieve the bomb if it’s been actualized. A list of everyone involved in the project and their details have been gathered. Immediate assassination of everyone in the list. Minimal collateral damage was requested by Black but you are to do what you have to for realization of the prime objective,” Taeyong answers, Yukhei moving the file in front of him to Donghyuck without looking at him.

Donghyuck flips through the pages and understands why the mission is so high priority. Kim Industries were planning on making bombs and selling them to China in return for huge sums of money.  China was currently unable to begin nuclear weapon production after the latest treaty with South Korea. By involving the Kims they would be able to have nuclear weapons without South Korea’s knowledge and because they were not directly involved in the production, Donghyuck’s home country wouldn’t be able to do anything in response as it did not qualify as a matter of breach in the terms of the treaty.

It was a matter of national safety and for some reason, Black trusted Donghyuck with it, trusted him to work with Yukhei for the mission and then the bulbs inside his head go off.

“We’ve gone on missions before.” Donghyuck lays it out thickly, with no space for anyone to escape, especially not Yukhei.

Yukhei nods but doesn’t respond otherwise for a minute, before speaking up. “If you are in, we’re leaving tonight.”

Donghyuck nods at Jaehyun in agreement and turns to Yukhei but the man stops his tapping on the table and gets up, storming out of the room.

“Is he always such a brat?” Donghyuck directs the question to the occupants of the room.

“He has his reasons,” Doyoung says and it’s not an answer but it’s all he’s going to get from them.

“That’s what he keeps telling me,” Donghyuck groans out.

Taeyong gives him that look from before, like Donghyuck hurt him somehow, like he wishes he had more control, “Maybe you just ought to trust him, Donghyuck. Knowing you, you would have put a bullet in him if you actually wanted to but you haven’t yet which means that some part of you must trust him.”

Donghyuck flips the file closed and tilts his head at Taeyong, trying to raid through his memories for anything related to the senior.

“Maybe, Agent Lee,” he answers when he comes up empty.

Taeyong’s shoulders sag in defeat and he rises to his feet.

 “Hyung. You used to call me hyung,” he breathes and Donghyuck feels panic seize his thoughts because Taeyong is tearing up as he says it but Donghyuck can’t remember there ever being a time when he knew this man enough to warrant the pain behind his eyes.

Before Donghyuck can sputter out a half-assed apology, Taeyong leaves the room much like Yukhei did.

Doyoung is out of his chair as soon as Taeyong takes off, muttering an apology in his wake as he followed the petite man out the door.

“We’ve all turned from skilled and dangerous secret agents to drama queens who can’t handle a little memory loss, huh?” Donghyuck says nervously in a vain attempt at humour.

Jeno shifts in his seat.

“It’s a little painful to be someone who has been forgotten, Donghyuck,” Jaehyun says, baritone voice breaking the silence, eyes evading his face before he bends down and pulls a drawer open. A box is slid across the glass surface to Donghyuck.

“What’s this, Agent Jung?” Donghyuck asks, eyebrows set in a frown.

Jaehyun smiles at him and it’s pinched at the corners like it tears him to do so.

“A gift. It’s something you told me you wanted.”

Donghyuck slides the gift across to the man after eyeing Jeno who had stayed silent through the entire conversation for dubious reasons. Jaehyun stops him halfway through by a hand placed atop his with a sort of tenderness people like them don’t use often.

“I can’t take this,” Donghyuck reasons.

“I want you to...” he looks him straight in the eye, “because a couple of months ago you used to call me hyung too,” Jaehyun says and he takes his hand away.

Donghyuck leaves the room with Jeno in tow, a Walther PP cradled in a box, a truckload of guilt and an almost painfully intense urge to hide under his bed like he did when his parents were being murdered in the other room.

 

***

 

“This is stupid. We’re not gonna get anything done like this, Wong,” Donghyuck huffs out, anger coursing through his veins along with the higher than normal annoyance rates.

They had dragged themselves to the house they were assigned to stay at, completely wiped out from the long drive and the first thing Yukhei had done was plop down on the bed. He had been unusually quiet except for when he asked Donghyuck what he wanted when they made a stop to get some food on the way to Daegu.

Despite Donghyuck’s continuous ranting, Yukhei hadn’t said anything as he kept driving, politely rejecting his offers to drive with a shake of his head.

Silence meant more time for his thoughts and Donghyuck had hated it. After about an hour into the drive, he had realized that Yukhei didn’t plan on saying anything, finally coming to the conclusion that his mission partner was stuck somewhere inside his head. But now that they were inside the house, Donghyuck made a mental vow to not let it go on.

 “Moron, look at me. Fucking say something, Wong!” Donghyuck yells, standing near the bed.

Yukhei doesn’t react.

“Why the fuck are you acting like you don’t have a mouth?” Donghyuck asks and he’s so royally pissed off that he pulls Yukhei up by the collar of his shirt, regretting it when his arms protest. Yukhei smirks and pulls him down on the mattress, flipping them over like a pro.

Yukhei hovers over him, barely a breath away, his hands on either side of Donghyuck, eyes wide and shining, smirk replaced by a sad smile.

 “I told you to call me Yukhei.”

He leans down and their lips are almost touching but even if all of his instincts ask him to pull away and roll away from him, his body remains calm except for the incessant pounding of his heart.

Then, Yukhei pulls away from him and lies down on the other side of the bed, his shoulder brushing against Donghyuck’s. Donghyuck presses a palm down on his chest in an attempt to keep it from beating straight out.

“You could have just told me that, drama queen. You didn’t have to make me suffer through an entire ride filled with your shitty music.”

Donghyuck remarks when his heartbeat slows down, refusing to acknowledge how comfortable Yukhei seemed on top of him, hair ruffled and eyes sleep-deprived.

“Must be your influence,” Yukhei chuckles and it feels off, like he’s forcing it.

Donghyuck laughs along anyway. Yukhei’s body heat permeates through Donghyuck’s thin t-shirt.

It’s nice.

“So, why didn’t you tell me you knew me from missions?” Donghyuck turns, facing the taller man and places his hand on the pillow so that he’s resting his head on his palm.

“It wasn’t important.” Yukhei turns to face him, mirroring his position. It’s way too intimate for two people who are just working together but Donghyuck doesn’t feel strange, so he stays close.

“That’s what you think,” Donghyuck inhales deeply, “How many?”

“All 17 of them,” Yukhei answers after a beat too long.

17 Level Blue missions with this one man.

Donghyuck wonders if this is what Jeno lied to him about. If it is, he understands why but even then, he feels a little like, actually a _lot_ like he has betrayed Yukhei even if things weren’t under his control. If it was Donghyuck on the other side of this spectrum, he would have been very upset, understandably so.

With the whole story laid out bare like this in the open, Yukhei’s distant and longing gazes that lingered when he was not dropping ominous hints crucial for the recon missions made a lot of sense.

Knowing a friend has forgotten everything related to you must be hard.

The thought makes his heart pang, the feeling way too intense for such a simple thought.

“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck breathes, voice heavy from something he can’t give name.

Yukhei’s gaze runs over his face as if he’s tucking every single one of Donghyuck’s features in his memory. Donghyuck shifts because something crawls under his skin and he suddenly wants to get away.

“No, I’m sorry,” Yukhei whispers and Donghyuck wants to ask him why his eyes are particularly shiny as he says it but without the pressure of the field on him, he’s a coward so he doesn’t.

Donghyuck sits up and announces that he’s going to take a shower, feet already carrying him to the rugged black trolley bag. When he looks back at Yukhei after grabbing his clothes, he is fast asleep, lips set in a thin line. He’s lying on his side, the length of his body tense, eyebrows knitted in a frown, hands twitching for something to hold.

It’s strange because during the few months the other agent dropped in for his random visits, not once had he ever stayed the night, leaving Donghyuck to keep building theories in his head. The only viable one his head formulated had been that he’s probably an agent just like him (the gun and his form were dead giveaways) which was proven right just today.

Donghyuck watches Yukhei’s hands clutch the duvet tightly, as if it’s a habit and weirdly it seems like he’s holding onto someone who isn’t there. Donghyuck sighs, a deep set but unexplained draining of his emotional resilience leaving him bone bare in an unfamiliar room with a man he has forgotten.

Donghyuck blinks up at the ceiling and goes inside the bathroom, making sure to close the door softly, not wanting to wake the other man up.

 

“Oh, you’re up,” Donghyuck says, surprised at seeing Yukhei flipping through the files on the bed as he pulls the bathroom door shut. He had roughly taken about an hour or so for showering, having gotten lost in thought but he had seen the way Yukhei had trouble keeping his eyes open multiple times during the drive, taking sips from his mountain dew every now and then. It doesn’t sit well with him that the taller woke up so soon.

Yukhei turns to him, dark circles still prominent, generic dark brown hair messy.

“We have to do recon from tomorrow. Have to meet an undercover agent too. He’s working as the assistant to a level manager there.”

Donghyuck nods, having already been informed by Taeyong that a Chinese agent from NCT’s Hongkong branch was undercover at Kim Industries, their only inside man.

“So what’s the game plan?”

He asks, throwing the towel on the chair and settling down on the bed. Yukhei blinks quickly in succession and faces him.

“They have a party organized two days later for a product launch. We’ll receive the particulars later but yeah, long story short, Kun will sneak us in and we get fingerprint samples of eight people. Then drive to the plant, slip in, confirm their plan, gain a copy of their security software, blow up the party hall if threat confirmed. Otherwise, back to base, surveillance agents will keep an eye on them.”

He doesn’t miss the way Yukhei casually mentions the undercover agent like he’s familiar. It’s a pretty solid plan, so Donghyuck hums before his thoughts zoom into one particular point.

“If he’s undercover, this Kun guy that is, how hasn’t he collected the fingerprint samples?”

It’s a genuine question.

“He has been working there for three months. Their plant is like a fucking dome of cameras so he was only able to get fingerprints of two of the project heads. It’s not like he can just whisk away glasses and be subtle about it. Also, the CEO never visits the plant, so he’s helpless.”

“We’re going to this party to steal glasses,” Donghyuck deadpans and a smile blooms on Yukhei’s face.

“And plates,” Yukhei adds, clearly finding the situation amusing, which it is.

A national, possibly international threat and it all rests on the shoulders of cutlery.

Who knew?

“I’m gonna take a shower. You should sleep.”

Yukhei says, flipping the file closed and gets off the bed. His shirt rides up and Donghyuck looks away.

“Donghyuck,” Yukhei calls out when Donghyuck is about to head to the other room. He turns slowly but Yukhei only opens and closes his mouth, not following up with anything.

“What?” He barks, unintentionally sharp. The frustration is misplaced so he repeats it softly.

Yukhei shakes his head. It doesn’t take him long to realize the other man isn’t going to say anything.

Donghyuck shuts the door behind him, already zoning out as he repeated the plans in his mind.

 

***

 

It’s not morning when he wakes up, instead, he hears a loud crash and he’s wide awake in seconds. He grabs his Astra and hovers outside the door only for Yukhei’s deep voice cursing to reach his ears. He lets his hands fall to the sides and opens the door.

Yukhei is shirtless but there’s a bandage wrapped around his mid portion, veiling the mid part of his torso. Donghyuck notices how the hand gripping the table is white with how tightly he’s holding on. There’s a broken vase next to the table, blue porcelain scattered on the ground. Yukhei tries to straighten up when he sees him but his breathing gets visibly heavier.

“You didn’t tell me you had a broken rib, idiot,” Donghyuck says, throwing his gun on the table as he walked to the other man.

“I figured it wasn’t the best opening statement,” Yukhei breathes and there’s pain on his face.

“How are we supposed to do this if you are hurt?” Donghyuck asks, worry mounting with the groan he lets out when he finally manages to straighten up.

“I’ve had worse on a mission. Also, I was healing well until you elbowed me in the side day before yesterday.”

Way to guilt-trip him. Donghyuck groans in frustration.

“I’m sorry but you were man-handling me,” Donghyuck says, regretting the sharp elbow he had slammed against the other’s side. Yukhei breathes heavily and there’s sweat adorning the sides of his face. Donghyuck figures that it’s the kind of pain that is all-encompassing. He wonders if he broke the rib again.

“Did I break it again?” He voices out.

Yukhei shakes his head. “Who do you think you are? Black Panther?”

Donghyuck doesn’t smile at the obvious attempt to lighten the mood because he’s honestly finding it difficult to look at Yukhei without thinking that part of his pain is his fault too.

“Donghyuck, it’s fine. You didn’t break anything. If you wanna help, get me some painkillers. I forgot to get a refill.”

Donghyuck stares at him for a moment too long and nods in understanding, ambling quickly to his room to get said item.

When he comes back, Yukhei is sitting on the bed, hands firmly planted on either side of him. Donghyuck grabs the water bottle from the table and hands two pills to the other man. Yukhei downs the medicine with three large gulps of water.

Donghyuck helps him lie down and huffs out a laugh at the other’s unfocused eyes.

“You’re so tired. Sleep, Yukhei,” he says and a wave of déjà vu hits him in the chest. Yukhei smiles, eyelids fluttering shut, expression serene but Donghyuck chalks it up to the medicine hitting his system.

Donghyuck doesn’t think much about it when he smoothes the thick brown strands of hair back from Yukhei’s face. It’s only when he is lying down in his bed that he wonders why he did it, especially considering how iffy he is with physical contact with strangers.

Maybe it’s because Yukhei isn’t a stranger.

He’s a friend.

Something feels terribly off about the thought but Donghyuck has no time to dwell on it because the next thing he knows is his eyelids veiling his view of the ceiling, too exhausted to catch up with his brain’s musings.

 

***

 

Morning announces its unwelcome arrival with the sound of the phone alarm insistently blaring with an obnoxious tune. He curses Jaemin and freshens up, trotting to the kitchen, mouth still faintly tasting like mint. Yukhei is seated atop the kitchen counter, feet hanging down over the cabinets below, an unfamiliar man at the stove, exuding a sagely aura even as he cracks the eggs. He stills in the hallway and squints his eyes.

Yukhei mumbles something in Chinese but the man at the stove looks straight at Donghyuck and smiles, eyes sharp but somehow emitting an aura of calm.

“Morning, Donghyuck,” he says, movements way too calculated for a seemingly normal person, not that he expects Yukhei to let just any random person inside their safehouse.

It takes a moment and a half, mostly because he’s still groggy from sleep from having fallen asleep somewhere his mind had figured was safe, for the pieces to click together.

“Morning, Agent Qian,” he says and hopes he sounds certain. Yukhei eyes him with an indecipherable look.

The smile on the undercover agent’s face falls off of his face, his gaze flickering between Yukhei and Donghyuck.

“You remember me?”

Donghyuck smiles sadly, shaking his head in response. The man visibly deflates, composure from before fading.

“I’m Kun. We’ve met before,” Kun says, holding out his hand to shake.

“It’s nice to meet you, hyung,” Donghyuck replies, tacking on the honorific, knowing that he can’t exactly do much about his dysfunctional head, hoping that this is enough.

Kun doesn’t let go of his hand for a long moment, gaze roving over Donghyuck’s face like he’s prying for the tiniest sign of recognition. The light in his eyes fades a bit when he finds none and he untangles their hands.

Kun is an agent of Black too, assigned mostly undercover missions, Donghyuck learns over the course of breakfast. Apparently, he had met him a couple of times courtesy of Yukhei’s closeness with the other Chinese agent. Donghyuck quietly wonders why Taeyong didn’t brief him on these particulars but finds his attention wavering to the way Yukhei seems so much more relaxed in the other agent’s presence than he did in the entire time he had seen him.

Donghyuck is mostly relieved but he also feels a thin, almost unrecognized strain of misplaced jealousy come over him for no valid reason.

Kun wordlessly gets up after breakfast and walks to the living room, Yukhei and Donghyuck following the elder agent. He plops down on the sofa and opens the black bag, pulling out two matte black envelopes with the Kim industries insignia on it.

“Here, your invitations. Your cover is that you are both working at Phoenix Pharmacies. Yukhei is my cousin and Donghyuck, you’re his fiancé.”

Donghyuck nods. He frowns at the way Yukhei’s eyes go wide, betrayal seeping in as he stares at Kun with a wounded look. He wonders if he and the other had never been required to play as each other’s significant others during the missions they went on. It effectively reminds him of that one time he and Jeno were assigned something similar two years ago, having had to scope out a potential threat at a wedding which didn’t happen because they had to shoot the groom right between the eyes having confirmed that he was a terrorist.

Subjectively, a good memory.

“When are we expected to arrive?” Yukhei asks, having procured one of the invitations from Donghyuck and given it a once over.

“The party starts at 7. But if you go early, the chances are high that you’ll be regarded carefully. So maybe, fashionably late. Around 7:30 or so?”

Yukhei places the envelope on the coffee table and sighs, running a hand over his face.

Donghyuck shifts in his seat.

“Going with you will be the easiest way to avoid suspicion though, don’t you think?”

Kun shakes his head.

“I have to accompany Jung to the party. I’ve been told to report at 5 because as much as this seems like an event for entertainment and relaxation, it isn’t. They’re signing two huge deals tomorrow.”

Donghyuck throws Yukhei a glance even as Kun carries on.

“It should only be in the initial stages, but even then, if you confirm detailed plans, let me know at that exact moment. I have to blow the place up.”

Donghyuck frowns.

“Alone?”

Kun smiles and it’s on the cockier side but not sharp enough to be a smirk.

“He’s a weapons and explosives expert, Donghyuck. He doesn’t need the Avengers to back him up.”

Donghyuck gapes a little, having been in the dark.

“There are three more who are related to the project but they won’t be attending tomorrow. They’re in town though. I’ll send you the addresses. I’m sure you can do the rest.”

The rest of the conversation is just a boring but tedious process of cross-checking and discussing Yukhei’s plans with Kun, parts of which Donghyuck zones out of, having chanted it over and over before he went to bed the previous night.

Kun stays till the afternoon. Donghyuck goes back to his room when his phone rings, Jaemin calling to inquire about how things are going, something that they gradually grew out of after their first years at the agency. He figures it’s probably because of how he’s just getting back on the field.

When he returns, having hung up on Jaemin blowing kisses through the phone, Kun and Yukhei are hugging in the kitchen. Despite being the taller and broader one, Yukhei is curled against Kun like a cat, the other man’s arms wound around him, Yukhei’s forehead on his shoulder. The elder agent cards his fingers through the fine brown hair atop Yukhei’s head, whispering into his ear in a gentle voice.

Donghyuck twists around and goes inside, heart pounding, feeling like he has stumbled across something he wasn’t supposed to.

Before he leaves, Kun knocks on his door, even though it is open. Donghyuck lifts the laptop off of his lap and raises an eyebrow.

“I’m leaving, see you tomorrow,” Kun says, but makes no move to leave, as if waiting for Donghyuck to say something. Donghyuck stays dutifully silent.

Kun nods to himself and turns around. Donghyuck scrambles around for the right words.

“Agent Qian,” Kun freezes, “Hyung,” he turns back around, facing Donghyuck.

“Hyung, are you... are you and Yukhei? Are you a thing?” It physically pains him to ask it but regardless, he doesn’t want to run away from the obvious signs of a crush. He is a retrograde amnesiac who is also an assassin slash secret agent and the last priority on his list should be a crush but he’s oddly brave today and he wants to know.

Kun’s expression shifts from one of shock to one of pity. There’s a loop Donghyuck is not aware of and the curiosity pulls him apart.

“No. He... God, he’s like a brother to me. I have a fiancé, Donghyuck.” Kun stutters a little at the beginning but he composes himself.

“Fiance?” Donghyuck asks, out of instinct.

Kun nods.

It’s a realization that takes a minute or so for him to process. His head hurts, a hundred needles piercing through the tissues of his brain. Then the pain diminishes to a throb.

“He’s.. I know him, don’t I?” Donghyuck asks because he doesn’t have a name or a face but there’s a feeling and if he digs deep enough he can get blurred images of someone kissing Kun goodbye at the door.

“Yeah,” he pauses, “but it’s okay to not remember him. His name is Yuta and he loves you regardless of everything else.”

Suddenly, there’s a name and a face, one belonging to a Japanese man in the mission centre with the too wide smile and sad eyes.

“Hyung, he’s the one who’s been handing me missions! I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to forget...”

Kun’s eyes soften. Donghyuck finally understands the reason behind why said man, a transfer from their Japanese base gave him longing glances he can now chalk up only to Taeyong and Jaehyun in its similarity.

“He knows that. He didn’t want to put you under pressure. He was your handler along with Taeyong but he tapped out this time because he found all of this,” he gestures vaguely, “a little hard to handle.”

Handler.

Donghyuck suddenly has the urge to throw up but he takes a calming breath.

“Congratulations on the engagement, hyung,” Donghyuck says, finally gaining enough common sense to acknowledge the happy news.

“Thanks, Donghyuck,” Kun says, smiling small, hugging him tightly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kun utters, pausing at the threshold.

Donghyuck falls back on the bed when he hears the front door slamming shut. Yukhei doesn’t come to his room like he expects him to.

The dull throb inside his head stays and he finds his hands reaching out for his Astra for some reassurance.

For proof that he hasn’t forgotten everything.

 

***

 

Donghyuck tugs at the tie even though it’s perfectly fine the way it is. He’s clad in the stuffiest suit in his closet but it was the one he had grabbed in a hurry after the meeting at their base along with the other necessities for the supposed week-long mission.

Yukhei had already nicked four glasses, sneaking them to the bathroom to lift the fingerprints off of them. Donghyuck is waiting for the elder to get back, eyeing the side door intermittently without being obvious. He smiles at Kun who is across the room talking to a middle-aged man, the stranger’s arms gesturing widely as he talks, loud laughter escaping him every now and then. The intention of the stranger is clear in the way he brushes his hands over the engaged agent but Kun only smiles bashfully, pretending to sip his champagne.

Somewhere around half past eight, they had started playing slow songs, couples taking to the centre of the hall to sway to the drawling music. Donghyuck sees a woman losing her balance, the man next to her helping her steady herself. Even though it’s a supposed business party, it feels much more relaxed and prom-like in some aspects except for the obvious obnoxious announcements from the CEO at the beginning.

Donghyuck feels an arm wrap around his waist, strangely familiar. He doesn’t tense as Yukhei presses his chest to his backside. He’s warm and in the air-conditioned hall, this is more than welcome. The lights are dim, almost bluish, the vibe of the night fully embodied indoors.

The youngest daughter of the Kims, second in line for the company giggles at the scene, clearly drunk, standing a few feet away. Donghyuck can only see the faint sparkle from her short dress in the corner of his eye but he knows that they haven’t been able to get her fingerprints yet. He leans back against Yukhei, stretching his neck, hoping the other agent gets the hint.

“Are you sure?”

Donghyuck closes his eyes and sighs in response. Yukhei breathes loudly before he leans down and hooks his chin over his shoulder, turning his face and pressing a kiss to the delicate column of his throat.

Donghyuck feels his skin tingle and he has to repeatedly remind himself that this is just a mission. Yukhei hands on his waist feel like they are burning right through his clothes. Donghyuck sighs in content and notices the girl walking to them.

“I’m sorry for interrupting but are you guys dating?”

Fascination and curiosity are painted all over her flushed face, one glassy eye shamelessly winking.

Heir to an empire but still so weak.

What follows is a weird conversation, one that leaves Donghyuck’s skin crawling with the way her lewd gaze skims over the both of them but when she sways from the alcohol, Yukhei is quick to call a guard while Donghyuck gently pries the glass from her hands.

By the time midnight arrives, Donghyuck and Yukhei are already out with the necessary fingerprints and on their way to the plant. Donghyuck drives this time, adrenaline rushing with the crucial moments of the mission hovering close.

“Here,” Yukhei says, throwing him a full-face cloth mask, bunching up his own in his left hand.

“Don’t die,” Donghyuck says after flashing him a look of gratitude and slams the door closed behind him.

Yukhei stares at him with wide eyes and gets out of the car but he doesn’t give it much thought because two armed guards open the gates and come out just then.

“Trespassing is prohibited,” the taller guard says, guns pointing at them.

Donghyuck reaches for his Astra but before he can shoot the men drop to the floor, Yukhei’s face blank as he lowers his silenced gun.

“Minimal collateral damage, Yukhei,” Donghyuck reminds him.

“They saw my face,” Yukhei says as explanation and strides forward, leaving the bodies on the ground, pulling the mask over his head, Donghyuck doing the same.

Taking down the rest of the guards is the easiest job, the old school chloroform technique proving ever so trustworthy.

Minimal collateral damage, they had demanded after all.

Yukhei slips inside the security centre cabin in the ground floor as Donghyuck receives confirmation from Taeyong that the cameras in the surveillance room have been remotely disabled.

The plant was supposedly shut down for the week due to some wiring renovations but the amount of security even in the wee hours of the night tells Donghyuck an entirely different story.

Donghyuck rounds the table and nudges Yukhei as the other hacks into the surveillance camera system and put the visuals on a loop meant to last for the time they would spend there.

“We’ve got an hour and a half,” Yukhei announces.

An hour and a half to get in and out.

Donghyuck nods and rushes out, Yukhei catching up to him with long strides.

Wading through the hallways isn’t as hard as they imagined, the structure of them not as complicated as they were in the blueprint. Kun had warned them about the security positions so it’s much easier to knock them out on their way to the seventh level.

Donghyuck sees Yukhei hunch over with a grunt on their way to the sixth floor, having foregone the elevators in favour of taking down the guards.

“Hey, you okay?” Donghyuck asks and Yukhei flashes him a thumbs up, eyes still screwed shut.

“We’ll take the elevators on our way down,” Donghyuck placates, helping the other agent straighten up.

“I’m fine,” Yukhei mutters blankly. It might sound cold to anyone else but Donghyuck has worked with his fair share of agents and he is familiar with the fact that most agents choose to have a separate persona when they’re on the field. Yukhei seems like one of them from what Donghyuck has seen but he can also notice the ways in which the agent persona has bled into the other’s daily life.

The sixth floor is relatively less guarded and Donghyuck is quick when he ambushes them. No matter the number of times he has intruded into a high-security facility, it never fails to amaze him how fast the guards go down.

People needed to invest in better-trained professionals.

Or maybe he was just that good.

The tall guard in his chokehold struggles and Donghyuck muffles him with a chloroform-soaked cloth, the man crumpling to the floor, eyes rolling to the back of his head.

They reach the seventh level and Yukhei lays the carbon black suitcase on the ground in front of the seemingly plain wall. Donghyuck wants to offer the man his assistance since bending down right now with a rib injury must be a bitch but Yukhei’s face is stoic, no signs of pain to be seen.

The Black agent opens his laptop and presses some keys and Donghyuck stands guard with his Astra behind him.

“Top right quarter. 92867HJ74.” Yukhei points at the top of the wall and Donghyuck hovers his gloved hand on the wall. Yukhei keeps typing vigorously and then a click resounds and a small keypad slides out of the wall, a shiny rectangular panel lifting up.

When Donghyuck enters the numbers, the keypad slides back in. A side of the wall shifts back and slides to one side. Yukhei scrambles to type something else and Donghyuck pauses.

“What are you doing?” He enquires.

“Keeping the doors open. Getting out won’t be as easy as this otherwise,” Yukhei says and presses another key with finality. There’s a high-density fibreglass door in the room that opens with a fingerprint and iris scanner on the left side just like Kun had told them he had seen during the rare times he got a chance to slip in.

Donghyuck lifts his phone up and fiddles with the iris scanner, sending the data via manipulated imagery projection, unlocking the fingerprint scanner, the panel opening with a click.

Yukhei takes the lifted fingerprints one by one and then the glass doors open on their own, revealing a hoard of computers. The large room is all pristine and white, looking every bit like the cliché villain den of the rich guy, lights coming on as they walk in, a round table in the centre, a huge screen on the wall lighting up with the company insignia.

“Welcome to the Grid,” Donghyuck says, not being able to control his mouth as he walks in and places the Astra on the table with the main computer.

Yukhei snorts at the Tron reference but doesn’t say anything otherwise, pulling another chair and sitting next to Donghyuck as he rifles through numerous files with incessant clicks of the mouse.

Yukhei switches on the computer next to the main one and hacks into its database, looking through the classified files, eyeing his watch once as if not to lose track of time.

“They’re at the final stages of conception according to these files. It seems that they have two trials planned. The process is set to begin two weeks from now,” Donghyuck states calmly even if all the information he’s being hit with every opened window makes him want to crush every single person working for Kim Industries.

Yukhei nods and looks through a couple of other files.

“Do a wipe, Donghyuck. Everything.” Yukhei’s voice drips certainty. Donghyuck nods and gets to it, as the other man goes around the room, switching on the other linked computers, plugging the USB with the bug to carry out the wipe automatically and uploading it. Donghyuck manually wipes the mainframe not wanting to risk it.

“Texted Kun hyung.” Donghyuck raises an eyebrow, but nods. He feels a little tug in his heart for the high school kid posing as an adult and tending the bar.

“The bomb’s set to go off in ten minutes,” Yukhei continues after a moment, loosening the screws behind the CPU.

He stops and looks at his phone again, a tiny smile appearing on his lips. Donghyuck pauses what he’s doing, curiosity getting the better of him.

“What?”

“Kun hyung sent the two boys behind the bar on a pizza run. Said the CEO wanted pizza.”

 _“They’re safe”_ is what he means. Donghyuck feels the hand threatening to seize his throat loosen.

They have twenty-seven minutes on the clock when Donghyuck cracks his knuckles and gets up, the system shutting down. He dismantles the circuit and takes the hard drive of the main computer, Yukhei having finished with the rest.

“We have won the war, Legolas,” Donghyuck declares as Yukhei steps out, his hands working chaotically precise over the touch screen of his phone, the wall sliding closed in a few seconds.

Yukhei turns to him with a strange look on his face and then proceeds to walk to the elevator. Donghyuck follows, slightly caught off guard at not being able to comprehend what Yukhei meant by it.

“Where to?” Donghyuck asks, finally pulling off the mask, feeling like his skin is thanking him for finally letting air through. His hands tap on the steering wheel, muscles relaxed.

Yukhei’s hair is messy from being contained by the mask and his face is shiny from the sweat, something Donghyuck can relate to. He leans back and then looks at Donghyuck.

“Three personal visits.”

Donghyuck nods and watches Yukhei’s long fingers poke the GPS, entering the addresses of the men whose lives were at the mercy of how fast Donghyuck drove tonight.

By around three in the night, they’re done. Not without a couple of collateral damages, none of which are fortunately family members, just two guards who got caught in the crossfire.

His work phone vibrates for the first time that night.

**JACK FROST (03:18 AM)**

**_Good job, sun._ **

Somehow he doesn’t need to look at the number to know who Jack Frost is. Perhaps, things were coming back to him.

“Kun hyung is going to join your base,” Yukhei says calmly as Donghyuck shifts gears.

Donghyuck had figured as much so it doesn’t really faze him despite being new information.

“You knew,” the other agent states after a second of silence. It’s not an accusation, just a statement of what’s obvious.

“Yeah, Mark told me that we needed a new Chinese agent to come in since Yixing hyung quit last month,” Donghyuck says, keeping his voice level.

It was good to have agents from other bases working for them and Jaehyun had always promoted it. It was the way NCT worked after all. Chenle and Renjun were not senior agents yet, lacking in the experience department but Kun wasn’t, so it wasn’t really a shot in the dark to assume that the other would join them.

Yukhei is silent for the rest of the drive, poking around on his phone playing Clash of Clans. It’s quite a significant paradox, Donghyuck thinks. One of the world’s deadliest assassins having the time of his life on a game meant for people with too much time on their hands.

Just another day, folks.

 

***

 

 Donghyuck curses under his breath as he nearly slips in the bathroom. He dries his hair with a pale pink, fluffy towel, hand moving in erratic motions as he uses the other one to open the door. Throwing the towel on the chair next to the table, he casts a momentary glance at his Astra resting comfortably on the wooden surface along with the other two guns he carried with him tonight.

His heart is still pounding chaotically inside his chest like it always does after a field mission. It’s relieving to know that his body still remembers it. The job in Bulgaria was basically just Chenle and him just rotting away inside the back of a surveillance van, Donghyuck had wondered about this then, had gotten lost thinking if his body’s responses would be the same until Chenle threw a marker to him from the other side of the van.

Right now, Donghyuck knows for certain that not much has changed but he wants to calm down. He doesn’t want to spend the rest of the night awake, reliving the mission; he can do that a couple of days later when he starts on the mission report. There’s a heavy weight on the back of his mind, pushing him down forcefully, ruthlessly, sounding a little like exhaustion but as long as adrenaline still pumps through him he can’t even attempt to sleep a wink. He briefly contemplates exercising, hoping to wear himself out but he had showered only minutes before and he doesn’t want to again.

Donghyuck is pacing the room, hair still wet and clumped from the shower when Yukhei knocks on the half-open door. He’s only wearing a black tank top and grey sweatpants, the outline of the rib brace visible because of the fit. His biceps and collarbone are on display, defined and taut but not in the way ripped, gym rats are. Donghyuck has the urge to touch, his fingers already fidgeting.

“Is something up?” Yukhei asks, still standing in the doorway, eyes wide.

Donghyuck shakes his head and pulls the sleeves of his t-shirt down to cover his palms, the wide neck of the shirt sliding down due to the stretch. He sees Yukhei’s gaze track the movement before the other man blinks and meets Donghyuck’s eyes.

This is not the first time he’s caught Yukhei staring. There have been a couple of other instances; enough for Donghyuck to have lost count. He knows that there’s some kind of tension in the air. He is perceptive enough to figure that the looks Yukhei give him are only a part of it.

Yukhei looks at him like he’s supposed to remember something else about them, something crucial but without a ground to begin with, Donghyuck is as good as someone doing a target practice without actually hanging down a target board.

It’s insanely frustrating and with Donghyuck finally coming to terms with his thoughts and confirming that he has a crush on the other man, he doesn’t really know where the line is because even though he knows that they were close, he still isn’t brave enough to ask and Yukhei is giving him nothing except strangely intimate looks to work with. It’s another matter that it unfailingly sends chills down his spine every time.

Donghyuck bites down on his lip and gnaws on it and when he opens his eyes, Yukhei is shifting on his feet, eyes glassy like he has zoned out but somehow still present.

“You should go sleep,” Donghyuck says, unable to ignore the purple bags under the other’s large eyes.

“Uh... yeah,” he doesn’t move, “probably,” Yukhei says, sounding uncertain, still looking at Donghyuck like he actually sees the whole fucking universe or some shit and it makes Donghyuck’s racing heart, break out into a full-on sprint. He opens his mouth and sucks in a huge breath because he’s already having trouble handling himself and Yukhei’s stares aren’t helping.

As if sensing the unnamed vibe in the room, Yukhei turns around and mumbles a soft _goodnight_ , his deep voice almost a whisper.

Donghyuck looks down at the floor in defeat, hands pulling the sleeves even further down in frustration, not enough for the fabric to tear but enough for it to be stretched beyond what it can take. A thick gust of air hits him in the face, the door swinging open, a flash of black and gold and then, Yukhei’s lips are on his.

Donghyuck’s eyes go wide in shock, Yukhei’s hands cupping his cheeks gently, large thumbs stroking his cheeks, soft lips pressed chastely against his bitten ones. It takes a moment for Donghyuck to react but he doesn’t pull away, simply pressing back softly and feels Yukhei’s tongue licking at the seam of his mouth. Donghyuck’s eyes flutter shut at that and he opens up without putting up a fight, Yukhei’s left hand trailing down the side of his body to rest on his hip bone.

Yukhei’s lips are much softer than Donghyuck imagined, not that he had much time to do that with everything that’s been going on. He kisses languidly, taking the time to explore and when he tilts his head a little, Donghyuck whimpers, Yukhei pulling away in shock. Donghyuck pulls him back in by his nape and licks into the other’s mouth, feeling his heart rate slow to a lull before it starts racing comfortably courtesy of an entirely different reason.

Yukhei’s hand slides the t-shirt up and he rubs slow circles on his hip, Donghyuck sighing into his mouth in response.

Kissing Yukhei is like sitting in a speeding car but also like you’re watching life move in slow motion. One moment, he’s licking into Donghyuck’s mouth, his tongue heatedly swiping all over, tasting him like there’s nothing else he wants in life but also like he’s in a hurry, scared that he’s going to disappear and in the next moment, he’s pulling Donghyuck closer, and leaning down, even more, to kiss him slowly, like he has all the time in the world, which is just an uncertain thing, the future that is but Yukhei makes him want to stay here in this moment and not bother with the rest.

That’s probably why Donghyuck feels weak in the knees. He pulls away from the kiss and rests his forehead on Yukhei’s shoulder, Yukhei’s other hand coming to rest on his other hip. Donghyuck breathes heavily, and he wants to say something, just anything but it seems like all the wit in him fades like a headlight in the distance.

The more he thinks about it, the more his chest aches. Kissing Yukhei, despite bringing on a multitude of sensations hadn’t felt strange, weirdly so, it even felt... familiar. Even now, with his face tucked into the other’s chest, Yukhei’s rough palms on his hips grounding him, he doesn’t feel like he’s with a stranger and it makes his eyes sting for some reason.

Donghyuck knows that it’s time to step away, that there’s something he should know by now but doesn’t and he wants to ask Yukhei but then he feels something wet dripping on his head and he twists his head up, pulling back a little, just barely a breath away, to see that Yukhei is crying.

“Yukhei?” Donghyuck whispers, his voice small and worried.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to,” Yukhei says and he looks like he has just witnessed a world collapse.

“Hey, it’s okay, I kissed you back, didn’t I?” Donghyuck stands on his tip toes and wipes the tears away but Yukhei doesn’t stop crying and it’s like his heart is in chains, being pulled in a million directions and it hurts when the tears just keep rolling down the other’s cheeks as he looks Donghyuck in the eyes, pain so obvious on his face.

More than all that, Donghyuck feels like it all fits, finally.

“Were we...” it’s a tough question to ask and it should probably come with a lot of yelling and rage but instead Donghyuck takes a deep breath and pushes Yukhei’s hair out of his face and asks, “Did I like you? Were we a... were we a thing?”

Yukhei takes his hand off his hips, placing them on Donghyuck’s wrists and pulls them away from his chest. He holds him like he’s porcelain and it makes Donghyuck flash back to when Yukhei’s grip on him left bruises just a few days ago.

Yukhei smiles sadly but doesn’t give him an answer, leaning in and kissing him on his forehead, Donghyuck’s eyes closing as if it is a conditioned reflex. He frowns when Yukhei whispers a muffled apology against the skin of his forehead.

Then he’s gone, walking out like the kind of storm you want to grab with bare, needy hands but can’t.

Donghyuck should follow him out but the realization of what he said hits him full force and he sits on the bed, not trusting his legs to keep supporting him. He gets up after what seems like forever and walks to Yukhei’s room, a shut door welcoming him. He knocks twice but gets no response.

Donghyuck rests his forehead on the wooden barricade and exhales heavily before he turns back around and retreats to his room. He runs his hand through his unruly hair.

Donghyuck lies down on the bed, head blank like the space at the horizon, void of anything and everything. It’s like he can’t think, all of a sudden. He puts his hand on his chest and it’s no longer threatening to rattle his chest cavity, having settled into a calm rhythm. Instead, there’s a huge gap in his memory, just as it has been since he woke up months ago and it’s weird, because he feels like he can finally figure out that the gap isn’t really just a gap.

It’s a lot more than that.

When Donghyuck wakes up in the morning, Yukhei is gone, nothing except the keys of the car on the table in the other’s room proving his presence.

 

***

 

Jeno and Jaemin are watching some stupid drama when he makes his way back home. It’s cold and he feels like he’ll freeze to death even if the weather says otherwise. He’s been in this state of stillness and unresponsiveness since the morning, something that began when Yukhei walked out on him a couple of hours ago.

Jaemin looks at him and smiles widely, Jeno following his boyfriend’s line of sight and mimicking the smile.

“You’re home,” Jaemin says, Jeno’s hands muting the volume.

They look happy. They’re living the dream and Donghyuck is here, living, breathing without the memory of the one man he might have loved but can’t be sure about because he’s a cripple who can’t remember a year and more.

He can’t _remember_.

Donghyuck lets the trolley bag sit in the hallway and walks forward, face impassive. Jaemin gets up with a look of concern, casting quick glances at Jeno who looks just as equally lost as his boyfriend.

“I want to remember him,” he breathes, surprising himself with the certainty in his voice even if this is the first word he’s uttered since he asked the question which made Yukhei pull away. His voice breaks at the next part, “but I can’t.”

Then there are lean hands pulling him close to a thin body, Jaemin, he realizes, long arms going around him as he feels Jeno’s stockier build envelop him from the back a second later. He chokes on a breath and then comes the tears.

Jeno apologizes profusely, telling him over and over that it killed him to hide it away from Donghyuck, that there were times when he hovered outside his room knowing that truth was only a push of a door and a conversation away. Jaemin does the same, tears freely flowing down his beautiful face as he confesses to keeping things from him, voice guilt-stained.

“Did he... did he contact you?” Donghyuck asks, wedged in between Jaemin and Jeno, the television muted, the apartment filled with white noise.

“Yeah, multiple times,” Jeno says, “He wanted to tell you everything but he was so scared, Donghyuck. I punched him once when he said that this.. this might have happened because he didn’t deserve you. I told him to stop being so selfish but he isn’t. Even now... even now, he didn’t tell you anything.”

Donghyuck leans into Jeno’s chest, the other’s chin poking him slightly on his head but he doesn’t move away.

“He wanted to stay away considering what happened but he couldn’t do it. That’s why he kept visiting you.” Jeno’s chest vibrates with every word spoken but Donghyuck’s heart tells him that the rhythm of the beat underneath is all wrong for him.

“The last mission before the coma, what happened then?” Donghyuck asks and Jeno tenses under him. It doesn’t skip his notice that Jaemin’s hand which was stroking his palm also halts.

Donghyuck pulls away from Jeno and glances between the couple. “You can’t tell me, can you?”

They nod in sync.

Donghyuck’s shoulders slump with the weight of the unknown.

“Do you know how long we were together?”

It surprises him really, the fact that he’s dealing with such a groundbreaking matter in his life with such levelheadedness. But a part of him also wants to find Yukhei and punch the life out of him for not giving him the truth he deserved to know while simultaneously wanting to curl up in a corner because he was in love and he has forgotten the feeling, mind relying on scattered feelings of déjà vu to make sense of this snowballing fear and loss in him.

“You came home from the first mission and you told me to start looking at wedding card designs. I broke Jeno’s mug out of shock and I didn’t know what was up. Then, a week or so later, you told me that you liked the guy you went on the mission with. So, I guess from the beginning itself? We weren’t authorized to know his name and just,” Jaemin trails off and Donghyuck sees Jeno’s hand rub at the tiny hairs on Jaemin’s nape.

“We didn’t know that it was a Level Blue too but you.... it was a month long mission, but you came home and you were brighter, Hyuck. You would go into the room with your phone and it would be just a few minutes but the smile on your face would remain even after you joined us. It was like watching Nana fall in love with me again,” Jeno says and his eyes sparkle, tears drying on his pale cheeks, but a small smile curving his lips up.

“Mission lengths varied but every time you came back, you would tell us a little more about him. One day, I came home and Nana was on a mission in Gyeongju and he was just here, still in his mission outfit, eating this piece of carrot looking at you while you cooked. I gave him the best friend speech that day but he only gave me a promise and then, Nana met him a couple of weeks later. He only told us he was from Black after we got Level Blue authorization. Everything was fine..” he pauses, “until you got hurt.”

Jaemin gets up as Jeno keeps talking and Donghyuck wants to ask where he’s going but he is torn between wanting to listen to what happened and checking on his other best friend. In the end, he lets Jaemin slip to the back of his mind, ears perked up for every little detail that Jeno recollects for him.

There’s silence for a bit of time after Jeno talks about a particular conversation he had with Yukhei which ended up with a promise ring on his finger, something Donghyuck doesn’t have on him now. However, he does remember the silver glint of a thin ring on Yukhei’s left hand. He had thought that it was strange when the man didn’t take it off even before wearing his gloves but Donghyuck had ignored it in favour of bigger details and now it makes so much sense.

Jaemin chooses that moment to come back, a large box cradled in his arms. He puts it in front of Donghyuck, Jeno helping to push the coffee table further away. He takes the paper cutter he brought and rips through the tape on top.

“Go on,” Jaemin says, softly.

Donghyuck hesitates but he opens the flaps anyway, a small gasp escaping him.

There are a bunch of polaroids, cards, a couple of framed photos, little trinkets like key chains, a bell, folded tissue papers, a lot of other stuff and a phone. Jaemin gets up and sits on Jeno’s side as Donghyuck kneels on the floor and rifles through the contents.

The polaroids are of places, messy handwriting lining its backside with confessions of a love Donghyuck can only picture in his head but never truly remember. There are the rare pictures of himself, sitting on a red rug, cooking in unfamiliar kitchens, standing on patios, sleeping on couches and so many more. In the ones he is awake in, he is looking up at the camera with a look he has never seen on himself.  Then there are the ones where two pairs of hands are entwined, one nearly dwarfing the other and his cheeks squished alongside Yukhei’s.

The phone, Jeno says, is Donghyuck’s old one which he bought after his old one broke. The passcode is Yukhei’s birthday but Jeno is the one who enters it in for him. There are a lot more of Yukhei’s pictures in it which makes sense considering that it is Donghyuck’s phone. The phone dies after a few minutes.

Donghyuck gets up without a word and carries the box to his room. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jaemin hold Jeno back, the man tucking his face into his boyfriend’s neck with a choked off sob that Donghyuck pretends he doesn’t hear.

He shuts the door behind him and puts the box on the polished floor. He slides down to the floor, back leaning against the wall and cries, a polaroid of Yukhei and him from one of the last missions as the date mentions, one that makes the other man look larger than life and so in love, clutched in his sweaty hands, heart hurting more than his head.

 

***

 

It goes like this.

“Jeno and Jaemin told me. Come home, Yukhei,” he says, silence on the other side before Yukhei mumbles out an affirmation.

It takes a few days but Donghyuck slips the key to his apartment after a grocery run to see the door to his room wide open. He doesn’t have to grab his Astra or remember the basic self-defence moves this time. He abandons the bags containing milk and eggs on the floor and walks with slow, certain steps to his room.

“You did it,” Yukhei says, eyes transfixed on the bright yellow wall.

Donghyuck hovers at the doorway, unable to deal with the way his heart clenches in his chest painfully at how perfectly Yukhei fits in amongst all the things that belong to Donghyuck.

“I did.”

Yukhei turns to him. There’s a scratch on his cheek and a cut on his lip. The few days delay fits in with the freshness of the wounds.

“What happened on the last mission?” Donghyuck asks because if he doesn’t ask this now, he’s never going to.

Yukhei sighs but holds the silence for a long moment. Donghyuck doesn’t move an inch into the room, standing at the threshold.

“Nothing happened.” Yukhei’s voice is honest but Donghyuck knows that he’s lying.

“Don’t you dare lie to my face, Yukhei. I deserve to know,” Donghyuck grits out, tears already pricking behind his eyelids.

“I’m not lying. Nothing went wrong in the mission. Things got fucked up when we were coming back. It was my fault. There was someone looking for me. I was stupid and they took you when I wasn’t with you. I found you but we had to fight our way back, backup was on their way but we had no time. Someone was about to stab me in the back but you blocked and when I turned, they hit you and you collapsed. That’s what happened.”

Yukhei blinks, narrating the events like a pointed mission report without any inflections and he’s smiling but his eyes are filled to the brim with tears. There’s pain, so much of it. Donghyuck knows that there’s more to it but for now, he’s fine with what Yukhei has given him.

“You told me that it’s dangerous to love someone like you loved me and you promised to put your safety first but in the end, you didn’t,” Yukhei says, voice raw and melancholic.

“I found them all, you know, and I ripped them all apart. And then Jeno called me and told me that you woke up but that you didn’t remember me...” Yukhei pauses, takes a deep breath and lets out an incredulous huff, “Who am I kidding? You still don’t. I tried. Every time I left, I told myself that this is the last time, that you deserve to live without being pressured by all these things that you’ve forgotten, that I was just a speck in the grand scheme of things; that I should just let you go because you deserve better. But I couldn’t, Donghyuck. I still can’t and right now, looking at you, all I wanna do is give you a choice and let you go but I can’t because I’m selfish.”

Donghyuck walks to Yukhei, the taller man staring at him with wide eyes and he wants to talk but his head disagrees it seems because the next thing he knows, he has punched Yukhei. Yukhei’s face whips to the side and he lifts his left hand to rub at his jaw, the cut on his lips bleeding now but he smiles.

“That’s for thinking you can make decisions for me,” Donghyuck says and takes another step forward, standing on his toes to press a kiss on the corner of his lips.

“That’s for loving me so much that you didn’t even care about anything else as long as I was happy and safe.”

Yukhei’s eyes are wide with shock, the corner of his mouth and jaw already pinkish from the punch.

“You... want to..” he trails off.

“I do. I don’t remember you but I want to so if you want to stay and have a shot at this, I’m here,” Donghyuck whispers, his left hand stroking Yukhei’s bruised jaw.

Yukhei nods, like there’s nothing else he wants in life, like he’ll take Donghyuck even if he doesn’t remember a thing about him, even if he doesn’t love him quite like he does.

 

***

 

“Do you remember him?” Kun asks, eyeing the promise ring on Donghyuck’s hand, a smile playing on his lips.

“No, I don’t. Not yet,” Donghyuck says, gaze fixed on Yukhei who is arguing with his cousin, Renjun, in the porch over takeaway.

“It’ll come to you,” Kun placates softly. Renjun puts Yukhei in a chokehold, both of them cackling like evil witches. Yuta slams the car door shut and pinches their ears, pulling them apart with a wide grin as they groan in unison.

“It doesn’t have to,” Donghyuck replies with a wider smile, eyes fixed on Yukhei.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (teleports)
> 
> HMU on my [cc](https://curiouscat.me/Crimsun)


End file.
